1 Czech Republic Koruna = 3.0055 Indian Rupee

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.1395 Israeli New Sheqel

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 593.6513 Indonesian Rupiah

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 12.8574 Hungarian Forint

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2761 Croatian Kuna

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.9959 Honduran Lempira

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.309 Hong Kong Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0321 British Pound Sterling

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0896 Fiji Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0363 Euro

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.6193 Egyptian Pound

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.5675 Estonian Kroon

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 5.1064 Algerian Dinar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 2.19 Dominican Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2738 Danish Krone

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 22.6374 Costa Rican Colon

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 155.0377 Colombian Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2815 Chinese Yuan Renminbi

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 32.8579 Chilean Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0386 Swiss Franc

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0558 Canadian Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.4832 Botswana Pula

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2281 Brazilian Real

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2744 Bolivian Boliviano

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0562 Brunei Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.015 Bahraini Dinar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0718 Bulgarian Lev

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 3.3818 Bangladeshi Taka

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0609 Australian Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 2.6449 Argentine Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0714 Netherlands Antillean Guilder

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.1462 United Arab Emirates Dirham

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 2.6612 South African Rand

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 4.9892 Nicaraguan Cordoba Oro

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 3.433 Mexican Peso

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 21.2075 Icelandic Krona

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 7.9819 Dominican Peso

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 3.6447 Czech Republic Koruna

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 82.5063 Costa Rican Colon

1 Japanese Yen = 0.172 South African Rand

1 Japanese Yen = 0.3225 Nicaraguan Cordoba Oro

1 Japanese Yen = 0.2219 Mexican Peso

1 Japanese Yen = 1.3709 Icelandic Krona

1 Japanese Yen = 0.516 Dominican Peso

1 Japanese Yen = 0.2356 Czech Republic Koruna

1 Japanese Yen = 5.3333 Costa Rican Colon

This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?

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Elisabeth Rosenthal has some good Swine-Flu advice. (Via Griff.)

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Literate Indians should be familiar with Ashis Nandy’s remark: “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.“ A Trinidadian Indian by the name of Chuck Ramkissoon, in Joseph O’Neill’s superbly inflected novel “Netherland”, is also fond of making bold pronouncements on the behalf of the game he wants to introduce to the U.S. “I’m saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket. What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match…”

It’s now my turn to be bold: “Netherland” is more of an Indian novel than the recent, much feted, Indian fiction. This is not only because O’Neill’s novel feeds our national obsession with the game. Nor even its exquisite description of what transpires on the playing field: “…. where the white-clad ring of infielders, swanning figures on the vast oval, again and again converge in unison toward the batsman and again and again scatter back to their starting points, a repetition of pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors.” No. My pronouncement is based on the fact that the Indian characters in the book are highly individualized and yet fully global in their identity. “Netherland” is not a sociological-historical epic thesis, nor is it a shallow, cynical report on injustice in the hinterland. Rich in observation, reporting as much on the interior life as on the life outside, it is a captivating literary achievement. A masterpiece.

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I loved Nina Paley’s brilliant animated film Sita Sings the Blues. If you’re reading this, stop right now—and watch the film here.

Paley has set the story of the Ramayana to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The epic tale is interwoven with Paley’s account of her husband’s move to India from where he dumps her by e-mail. The Ramayana is presented with the tagline: “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

All of this should make us curious. But there are other reasons for admiring this film:

The film returns us to the message that is made clear by every village-performance of the Ramlila: the epics are for everyone. Also, there is no authoritative narration of an epic. This film is aided by three shadow puppets who, drawing upon memory and unabashedly incomplete knowledge, boldly go where only pundits and philosophers have gone before. The result is a rendition of the epic that is gloriously a part of the everyday.

This idea is taken even further. Paley says that the work came from a shared culture, and it is to a shared culture that it must return: she has put the film on Creative Commons—viewers are invited to distribute, copy, remix the film.

Of course, such art drives the purists and fundamentalists crazy. On the Channel 13 website, “Durgadevi” and “Shridhar” rant about the evil done to Hinduism. It is as if Paley had lit her tail (tale!) and set our houses on fire!

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